UCLA Center for the Study of Women

At a talk, entitled “Outline of a Theory of Sexual Practice: Bringing Bourdieu to the Sexual Field,” which was organized by the Center for the Study of Women and cosponsored by the Department of Sociology’s Gender Working Group, Adam Isaiah Green, a University of Toronto sociologist, offered the audience an exciting glimpse into the broad and ambitious theoretical framework he is developing to explain the intimate connection between the social world and sexuality. He was only able to present a small slice of this expansive project during the talk but demonstrated the compelling potential this framework has not only to generate novel approaches to the classic sociological questions of sexual behavior and identity but also, and more importantly he suggests, to better understand the elusive grey area of sexual desire.